Various devices are presently available for dropping agitator balls into aerosol cans while the cans are being transported by a conveyor. For example, one design utilizes a horizontally mounted circular plate containing multiple "pockets." This plate rotates over a similarly mounted stationary plate having a plurality of apertures therein. The operating principle utilized by this design is that if an aerosol can passes under the plates when a pocket and an aperture are aligned, an agitator ball can pass therethrough into the aerosol can. The foregoing design has a number of inherent disadvantages since it cannot drop agitator balls of a size other than the size of the "pockets" formed in the plate. If a different size agitator ball is required, the plates must be changed. In addition, this design cannot drop agitator balls which are not perfectly round. Perfectly round agitator balls are typically more expensive than unfinished ball bearings which are generally used for agitator balls.
Another design for a ball dropping device utilizes a trough through which the agitator balls are fed down a tube and into a plastic screw device. By changing the screw device, more than one agitator ball can be dropped into an aerosol can, however, to change ball sizes requires changing the trough, tube and the screw device which entails an inordinate amount of time.
Because of the foregoing inherent disadvantages with presently available ball dropping devices, it has become desirable to develop a ball dropping device which can drop one or more agitator balls of the same or different size into aerosol cans as the cans are transported thereunder on a conveyor.